Uyghur victims narrate about Chinese atrocities to House of Commons of Canada
Jul 21, 2020
Ottawa [Canada], July 21 : The House of Commons of Canada on Monday discussed the human rights situation of Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province by discussing the real-life threats witnessed by the Uyghurs, the minority Muslim community.
At a review meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development at the House of Common of Canada, the members were joined by Uyghur victims via video conferencing, who exposed China's worst atrocities on them.
Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C. said, "Since 2017, up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang have been strapped up probably largest incarceration of an ethnic-religious minority since the holocaust".
He added, "Researchers have described this campaign as cultural genocide. Now, new research has strong evidence that Beijing's action in Xinjiang also meet the physical genocide criteria cited on Section D of Article II of the United Nations Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide" imposing measures intended to prevent births within the targeted group".
Kamila Talendibaevai, whose husband Huseyincan Celil, a Canadian citizen, was sentenced to life in a Chinese prison for founding a political party to work on behalf of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province in 2006, also joined via video conference as a witness.
Celil has been languishing in jail for nearly 14 years without access to a lawyer. China has refused to acknowledge his Canadian citizenship or grant him access to consular services since his arrest.
Kamila told the sub-committee, "Since 2006, I don't have any communication with him. It's been 14 years now. He doesn't even have consular access and we are in regular touch with the Canadian embassy in China".
Saygagul Sauytbay, another Uyghur witness who was forcibly put in a concentration camp in Xinjiang also joined via video conference. She said, "In the concentration camp where I was imprisoned there were about 2500 people and all of them were innocent people, who were sent to those concentration camps with fake claims. The age range of people imprisoned was between 13 to 18 years old".
She added, "The people were handcuffed and every corner of the prison cell had CCTV cameras and in the middle of the prison cell had one big CCTV camera and all corridors had cameras as well and they were controlling us 24 hours a day".
"The prisoners were forced to learn Chinese traditions, Chinese culture, songs and prisoners were forced to praise the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping," the witness told the Sub-committee while adding the Uyghur women were raped and tortured at these concentration camps.
Jacob Kovalio, a professor of Chinese history at Carleton University said, "There has to be more cooperation and coordination with regards to the applying pressure on China so that the Uyghur situation improves".
"The UK last week announced that it was abandoning its 5G network with Huawei and moving to Japan - the Japanese technology and companies. The democracies - Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan should do more to reinforce and impressing upon Chinese regime, first and foremost Xi Jinping, what we are all about, because this is a dire threat not only to Uyghur, first and foremost of course, but also to the rest of the democratic world", he added.
The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are considered to be one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities.